Rock stars and authors, one and the same

No, I'm kidding, only Neil Gaiman gets to be a rock star author (except for celebrity memoirs). But Jeffrey Wasserstrom came up with 5 reasons author tours are like rock concerts. Among them is the knowledge that being the opening act for someone huge is bittersweet. He of course leaves out the drugs and groupie sex, to meet HuffPo standards of cleanliness.

International book covers are ridiculous

What possible discussions took place in Germany, for instance, when publishers first received the manuscript for Martin Amis's House of Meetings – a novel that describes the misery of life in a Russian gulag – and set to work on a cover that featured six figures body-popping in the windows of a modern apartment block? What prompted Italian book designers to give junior wizard Harry Potter a hat shaped like a mouse, and why did the French opt against the monochrome design that jacketed Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated in the UK and the US, concocting instead a watercolour of somebody fondling a woman's breasts?

These are super fair questions! What is up with some of these international covers?

Futuristic dinosaur space fairy tales

Question: is there anything better than Qwantz? Answer: of course not.

Why yes, you do have time to read the entire archive during your lunch break. And I can tell you from experience: don't forget to read the rollover text, or you'll have to read the whole archive a second time.

Dothraki is real, squees from my face

So, ok, deep breaths: HBO created a grammar for the language Dothraki from A Game of Thrones. No I'm not that excited whatever shut up.

An anthropological look at vampire lit

The University of Hertfordshire is putting on a conference about vampires in literat...books. And it looks to be a doozy! Potential topics include:

• sexuality and the (living or undead) body  
• Goth culture 
• celluloid vampires: adaptations and incarnations
• teen vampire/zombie fiction 
• blood, money, and circulation 
• the Undead as Other (nationality, class, gender, etc.)

Guys. We are ALL GOING. To quote the cinema: pack your shit! Pack your shit! We gotta get out of here!

Margaret Atwood loves Twitter.

Seriously, she loves the Twitter. She writes:

One follower led to another, quite literally. The numbers snowballed in an alarming way, as I scrambled to keep up with the growing horde. Soon there were 32,000—no, wait, 33,000—no, 33,500… And before you could say LMAO (“Laughing My Ass Off,” as one Twitterpal informed me), I was sucked into the Twittersphere like Alice down the rabbit hole. And here I am.

Oh my goodness, Ms. Atwood, I officially love you.

Celebrity gossip? Count me in

I am a devoted Jezebel reader, and they have yet to let me down. A perfect example of this continued excellence is this gallery of 20 celebrity biographies you must read. Damn you Jezebel, giving me more to read...

Salinger fan mail: Not always fun mail

Joanna Smith Rakoff wrote an article that made me sad, about answering fan mail for J.D. Salinger. She says:

The letters came from Sri Lanka or the Netherlands or Arizona. They included deeply personal admissions—cancer diagnoses, bankruptcy, divorce—and were often written in Salinger's own brash style or, at the very least, incorporated the slang of the period he chronicled....For the most part, they knew that Salinger didn't read his fan mail—in fact, he'd insisted that nothing, not one letter, be passed on to him—but each was convinced that his letter was going to be the one that was so moving, so brilliant, so funny, so perfectly aligned with Salinger's interests and sensibilities, that we, at Ober, would pass it on to him.

...These were not letters that the writers had tossed off carelessly, but notes that had clearly been written and rewritten, until just the right tone was struck. How could I simply throw them away? I began sending them personal letters telling them how much we appreciated hearing their stories and explaining, more gently, that we were prohibited from sending Salinger his mail, but we so often wished that we could.

Back in the day I used to answer a subset of religious and spiritual slush, which was heavily populated by car crash victims and lonely little old ladies, and so I recognize the urge to write really, really, really nice "sorry and no thank you" letters. (A few times writers sent me long handwritten thank you notes in response to my rejections, which actually almost made me cry at work once.)

As much as people in the industry give shit to the slush pile (and I give a ton of shit to the slush pile), and as hardened to illiteracy and jerk-ness as everyone gets, there are still some letters that crack you open like a tiny crustacean.

The zombies are tweeting, hide your brains

Well, technically, the zombies are being tweeted about. Manvszombies is a Twitter feed that chronicles the zombie apocalypse. Two of my favorites thus far are:

Sometimes when I'm bored I look out the window and imagine a fireball whizzing down the block. I think that actually just happened.

and:

Even the zombies are getting into it. They seem to be BBQing. I could have sworn one muttered, "Oooh, the boob meat is tender."

I almost wish zombie novels and Twitters were not so amazing, because I cannot stop reading them and they routinely scare the crap out of me, and then all  of a sudden it is 4am and I am planning my zombie escape plan (it is very, very detailed. Spots on my survival team are still open). I read somewhere around 100 books a year, and World War Z is the only one I routinely recommend to people.

And so, as someone who is 100% objective, all of the time, I can safely say: zombies are awesome.

"Dead babies are my thing," say two French novelists

Let me summarize a hairy, angry plagiarism situation for you, friends. In 1995, Camille Laurens published a book that dealt with the death of her baby. In 2007, Marie Darrieussecq published a novel on the same topic, which Laurens termed "psychological plagiarism." This was awkward, because both shared an editor, who ended up siding with Darrieussecq. Last week they both put out books about the feud, of which "[o]ne was a studious analysis of literary theft; the other was a thinly veiled fictional account of a novelist who is dropped by her publisher after accusing a young rival of plagiarism."

Listen, France. I know you're in a rumormill drought, since Sarkozy's multiple divorces and marriage to a model are old news. But literary feuds as tabloid fodder? Really? England is a smaller country and they have, off the top of my head, Amy Winehouse, Jordan Price, and Lily Allen (and that's after losing the Beckhams to LA!).

I think all of us thoughtful Americans should ship some of our more salacious celebrities, who grace our tabloid covers weekly, to France, to educate the French about what belongs in the tabloids. The transplants can do homestays and pretend to go to classes. You're welcome, France.

More dicks, making trouble

The estate of Philip K. Dick is suing Google because the names of the Nexus One cellphone and its operating system (Android) are too close to the Nexus 6 androids of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, also know by the movie title "Harrison Ford you were so handsome when you were young and retiring androids."

The real question is, why isn't George Lucas suing Motorola's Droid cellphone? Because he OWNS THE WORD, and let them use it. And, since he only sues those who flout him, this is not the Droid he's looking for.

What your favorite authors say about you (it isn't very good)

Lauren Leto, of Text From Last Night fame, put together an amazeballs list of what types of people like certain authors. My personal favorites:

Dave Eggers: Guys who are in the third coolest frat of a private college.

Nick Hornby: Guys who wear skinny jeans and the girls that love them.

Phillippa Gregory: Women who have repressed their desire to go to Renaissance Festivals

Richard Dawkins: People who have their significant other grab them under the table in order to shut them up whenever someone else at a dinner says something absolutely ridiculous and wrong.

and:

Michael Pollan: The girl who just turned vegan to cover up her eating disorder.

I know that Michael Pollan girl. She is a "model" and "eats," she swears.